"A presumption of acting with consent"...what that means is that if the Scottish Parliament does NOT consent to anything decided by Westminster in the context of Brexit...(which can mean ANYTHING), for the next seven years, politically forever...it will be treated if it did...Thus breaking every principle upon which devolution is founded.
Our elected representatives...our opinions....and our votes...will amount to exactly nothing.
So THIS is what they meant by "Taking Back Control!"
Actually, that's not just a flip remark. "Take Back Control" worked so well as a slogan in the Brexit Referendum because it answered a very specific social and psychological need. For the English people to take back something they felt they'd lost. The globalised economy was felt to have robbed economic life of a sense of identity and purpose. The systematic destruction of the welfare state over the last thirty years had robbed people of a sense of "us"...the people "they" were supposed to look after. Brexit, ever more explicitly , is an English nationalist moment...and Scots should not be entirely surprised by it, or feel unconnected to many of the impulses behind it. After all, many Yes voters also voted to Leave. However, it is now becoming clear that a suppression of the qualified autonomy represented by the Scottish parliament is very much among the things that Brexit is "taking back control" of. Resentment of noisy jocks is absolutely smack dab at the centre of the agenda. This English national Moment is, in the usual confused way, mixed up with BRITISH hegemony. What the next few days and weeks will tell us is just how explicit the consequences of the English National Moment are for us…and whether this grotesque insult to the principles upon which we thought devolution were built is as accidental and unthinking, or a deliberate act of bureaucratic violence springing from the same poisonous source as the Windrush scandal.
Actually, that's not just a flip remark. "Take Back Control" worked so well as a slogan in the Brexit Referendum because it answered a very specific social and psychological need. For the English people to take back something they felt they'd lost. The globalised economy was felt to have robbed economic life of a sense of identity and purpose. The systematic destruction of the welfare state over the last thirty years had robbed people of a sense of "us"...the people "they" were supposed to look after. Brexit, ever more explicitly , is an English nationalist moment...and Scots should not be entirely surprised by it, or feel unconnected to many of the impulses behind it. After all, many Yes voters also voted to Leave. However, it is now becoming clear that a suppression of the qualified autonomy represented by the Scottish parliament is very much among the things that Brexit is "taking back control" of. Resentment of noisy jocks is absolutely smack dab at the centre of the agenda. This English national Moment is, in the usual confused way, mixed up with BRITISH hegemony. What the next few days and weeks will tell us is just how explicit the consequences of the English National Moment are for us…and whether this grotesque insult to the principles upon which we thought devolution were built is as accidental and unthinking, or a deliberate act of bureaucratic violence springing from the same poisonous source as the Windrush scandal.
(Surely there can be no one left who thinks that this
generation on West Indians were targeted by accident!)
The events of the last few days in Scotland and Westminster,
and the provisions of the bill now published, are an absolute vindication of a
simple proposition. You can have a unitary Brexit, or you can have effective
devolved government. You cannot have both.
Brexit, as I’ve indicated, is an expression of English
national feeling...which is hardly something in itself to criticize from a website that supported the Yes campaign in 2014. But it is taking the twisted form of a nostalgic
resentment of 21st Century reality. Part of the Resentment of Empire is the visible…hence annoying…limited autonomy of the "regions." The fact that all
that was really "added" to the constitution in the late 1990s was a
democratic element to a federalism that already existed...is neither here nor
there. The Union settlement itself is a triviality in contemporary British
politics. What matters is the irritation. All that
matters politically is that the irritation be soothed or removed.
The Labour Party have now removed Wales from any future
consideration as a stone in the pathway of a "Smooth Brexit." And the voters of Wales will reap the harvest
of obedience. But Wales at least VOTED for Brexit as well as devolution. Scotland voted decisively against
Brexit and for at least a measure of democratic participation in specifically
Scottish matters...such as agriculture, fishing and energy policy that were
themselves partially devolved to EU coordination. Can those who devised that Parliament
now act with the Tories to strip back that measure of democratic self
government in the name of a Brexit that the country voted decisively against?
On what possible grounds? The
devolution settlement of 1997 is now untenable. It cannot survive Brexit. The
alternatives are either an absorption into a unitary UK State that has never
existed in this form before...(the Barnett Formula, for example, is unlikely to
survive)...or fundamental re-negotiationThis may or may not be called
"Independence." , itself a very 20th Century term in a very different
set of realities in the 21st Century. But be sure that unless Scotland remains
as a "problem" for Brexit, Scotland will cease to exist politically
in the UK except as a footnote. Any consideration of the needs of the people of
Wales in the context of agricultural or regional policy is already fading into
irrelevance. Everyone who supports devolution as a meaningful element of
Scottish life HAS to stand firm with the Scottish Government, or face oblivion.
Just as a footnote of my own, the influential Tory think tank, The Institute
of Fiscal Studies has just reporterd that they see no future for the Barnett
Formula after brexit. Taking control of the
portfolios coming back from Brussels is very much the thin end of the wedge. This
is the essential context for the "deal" that WM has offered Scotland.
If we take the deal, we are handing all control over ScotGov funding to Tory
Government discretion. Not just a bit of it. All of it. Is that really okay
with everyone except Nicola Sturgeon?
There are lots of things about Brexit we in Scotland can’t
do anything about. If this point of
principle is conceded on the Continuity Bill, there will be nothing we can do
about any of it – which is precisely the idea. What we can and must do right now is defend
the devolution settlement itself…and hold accountable the Labour and Liberal
MSPs whose predecessors designed it. Are
they really happy to give it away for the slim chance of a Brexit supporting Corbyn
government?
No wonder Carwyn Jones resigned as Welsh Labour Leader
rather than countenance cancelling devolution till we "sort" Brexit? A time frame of seven years “while they sort
Brexit out” is a political eternity. Brexit is a car crash that can't be
sorted. Do we really just amble on with our heads in a light proof rubber sack
till the Tories win a General Election in 2022?
